Judge Makes Massive Decision In Arizona Election Case

December 14, 2022 in News by RBN Staff

 

Source: Conservative Brief

A judge who is overseeing the challenge to the election for Arizona governor has made a major decision.

Judge Peter Thompson has ordered Republican candidate Kari Lake, Secretary of State and Governor-elect Katie Hobbs, and the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors officials to appear at an emergency hearing on Tuesday, the Epoch Times reported.

“Judge Peter Thompson, in issuing the order, wrote that the court has ‘reviewed’ Lake’s ‘verified statement of election contest’ and said the ‘matter will be set on an accelerated basis.’ Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer and Board of Supervisors Chairman Bill Gates were also ordered to attend the hearing, which will start at 2 p.m. ET,” the report said.

“We’ve had three whistleblowers from Maricopa County reach out and say the system is seriously flawed,” the Republican said to Just the News on Monday. “They were throwing out tens of thousands of signatures saying they were scribbles that in no way matched. But somewhere between there, the ballots were being completely tossed out and they got looped back into the system and counted as if they were fine.”

She said that around 25,000 “additional ballots and early voting ballots were discovered two days after Election Day,” and that they “just showed up.”

“It shows the whole system has serious problems,” the candidate said.

“We believe that up to 135,000 ballots were pushed through that should not have been pushed through,” she said. “We’re asking a judge to let us take a look at all of the envelopes and compare signatures, so that we can find out for sure how many bad, fraudulent ballots got through in that way, of basically cheating or breaking the rules.”

Maricopa County spokesman Fields Moseley said that the courts are the appropriate place to handle such claims and that Maricopa’s election division “looks forward to sharing facts about the administration of the 2022 General Election and our work to ensure every legal voter had an opportunity to cast their ballot,” Reuters reported.

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The Republican candidate filed the challenge on Friday and said that she believed that the number of illegal votes was greater than her opponent’s margin of victory, Just The News reported.

“The number of illegal votes cast in Arizona’s general election on November 8, 2022 far exceeds the 17,117 vote margin… Witnesses who were present…show hundreds of thousands of illegal ballots infected the election in Maricopa County,” the petition said.

In addition, she argues that “thousands of Republican voters were disenfranchised as a result of Maricopa County election officials’ misconduct in connection with the widespread tabulator or printer failures at 59% of the 223 vote centers in Maricopa County.”

Just the News reported further:

Lake’s claims echo those of Arizona Republican Attorney General candidate Abe Hamadeh, who filed a separate challenge on similar grounds Friday afternoon. Hamadeh’s race was much closer, with his Democratic opponent leading by a mere 511 votes, the closest statewide race in Arizona history. A recount is in progress in that race.

The former conservative media personality has long asserted that the state’s election system is mired in voter fraud and that it had handed the 2020 presidential contest to President Joe Biden.

Lake believes her lawsuit will prevail and said she’s willing to “take it all the way to the Supreme Court” if necessary.

“We’re ready to go with what we believe to be an exceptional lawsuit. And we believe we will be victorious in that lawsuit,” Lake told Steve Bannon on the War Room podcast. “We’ll take it all the way to the Supreme Court if we have to. We will not stop fighting.”

Hobbs certified her own win over Lake on Monday with outgoing Arizona Republican Gov. Doug Ducey, Attorney General Mark Brnovich, and state Supreme Court Chief Justice Robert Brutinel as witnesses, according to ABC News.

With the certification complete, Lake had five days to file legal challenges in court.

“We’re ready to go with what we believe to be an exceptional lawsuit. And we believe we will be victorious in that lawsuit,” Lake told Real America’s Voice “War Room” host Steve Bannon.

“We’ll take it all the way to the Supreme Court if we have to. We will not stop fighting,” she continued.

Over the weekend, Lake’s campaign issued a blistering response after being rebuked by a federal judge appointed by then-President Barack Obama, who also imposed a fine after filing an election-related lawsuit.

U.S. District Judge John Tuchi of the District of Arizona rejected a Lake lawsuit earlier this year and then moved to fine her attorneys and those of Republican Secretary of State candidate Mark Finchem last week.

“Imposing sanctions, in this case, is not to ignore the importance of putting in place procedures to ensure that our elections are secure and reliable,” Tuchi wrote in his order. “It is to make clear that the Court will not condone litigants ignoring the steps that Arizona has already taken toward this end and furthering false narratives that baselessly undermine public trust at a time of increasing disinformation about, and distrust in, the democratic process.

“It is to send a message to those who might file similarly baseless suits in the future,” Tuchi’s order noted further.